A whisper came over the line. A click of sound.
“Kyle…” The voice was distorted, far away.
His brows pulled low. “This is Agent McKenzie.”
“Kyle, save me.”
His grip almost shattered the phone. “Who is this?”
“Help me!” The voice had risen to a scream. “Kyle! Kyle! I want to go home!”
Ice crystallized in his veins. Staticky, distorted, but he knew that voice. There were some voices a man never forgot. “Maria?”
She was screaming on the phone now, her words no longer intelligible.
“Maria!” he shouted.
But she didn’t answer. There was only silence on the other end of the phone.
“Maria?” His voice was low, lost, even to his own ears.
There was no answer. The line was dead.
Frantic, he tried to call the number back. It just rang and rang and rang.
“Kyle?”
His head whipped up. Cadence, wearing her FBI T-shirt again, stood in the doorway. She turned on the lights.
He could see the worry on her face as she asked, “What’s happening?”
“She’s not dead.” His voice was a rasp.
Cadence stepped toward him. “Who isn’t dead?” There was a strange note of hesitation in her voice.
“Maria.” He had to get a trace on the call. Had to pinpoint the location. “It was Maria’s voice on the phone.” He was staring into Cadence’s eyes when he said his sister’s name.
Shock rippled across her face even as she shook her head. “Kyle, that’s not possible.”
She still didn’t have hope. Even after they’d saved Lily, she still couldn’t hope.
“I know my sister’s voice.” She’d called him. She was hurting. Maria needed him. “She’s alive.”
“He’ll be coming soon, Maria,” he whispered as he tossed the phone into the woods. It would be found, eventually. “But the agent won’t find you.”
Maria had been his too long. There was no going back for her.
He slid into the driver’s seat. Turned up the music. Music silenced the screams and he hated the sound of screams. You could drive right through town, your radio blaring, a girl in your trunk screaming, and no one would hear.
They’d just pay attention to the music.
Not the screams.
It shouldn’t have been time to find new prey. Not so soon. Hunting now wasn’t right.
Lily should have stayed with him longer.
As long as Maria had stayed.
He turned up the radio. The driving sound seemed to beat in his blood. Loud, so loud…
Not like in the caves. When he had silence with his girls. That perfect quiet.
Soon, he’d have his new prey within his sights.
The agents would be so f**king lost, so busy, they’d never even notice his attack.
And too late, they would understand just how powerful he was. He’d outsmarted the FBI. He’d hunted for years…and they’d only discovered the truth…
When I let them.
He was the one who should get the glory. He was the one with the power. It was time everyone realized that fact.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The burner phone was lifted and carefully placed in the evidence bag. Early morning sunlight drifted through the trees, glinting like the fingers of a ghost in the woods.
The phone had been ditched just twenty feet from Death Falls.
Cadence shook her head. Twenty feet. After their discovery of the entrance to the caverns—the entrance behind the roaring water—guards had been stationed at the perimeter. Someone should have seen something when the phone was ditched.
No one had.
“He wanted me to know she was still alive.” Kyle stared down at the evidence bag. “The bastard has had her, all this time.”
Even in the rising heat, Cadence shivered. She didn’t think Kyle was right about what was happening in Paradox. Fifteen years was a long time to hold a victim prisoner. She’d heard of it happening, just a few times, but the perp didn’t usually take other prey when he had a living victim.
He only took a new woman when the other victim died.
The thirteen tally marks had been carved on the wall for a reason. “Kyle, are you absolutely sure it was your sister’s voice?” She wasn’t sure. She’d just caught the end of the call. Heard his shout. Seen his fear.
Kyle leveled his stare at her. The same stare had burned with passion hours before, but now, it was almost like she was looking into the eyes of a stranger.
Part of him had shut down. He was too focused now.
Obsessed.
With a ghost.
“I’m sure,” he said, certainty cracking the words.
Cadence shook her head, even as she handed the evidence bag to the tech next to her. With word of Lily’s rescue, reinforcements had arrived courtesy of the FBI and the task force that was forming to capture Lily’s abductor.
Lily’s abductor—the man they suspected had taken and killed eleven other women.
“It’s been fifteen years.” She tried to keep her voice emotionless. “You said yourself the connection wasn’t good. It could have been some kind of recording, a trick to make you believe you were talking to your sister.”
“She called my name.” A muscle jerked along his jaw. “She was begging for me to help her. To take her home.”
“Maybe that’s what he told her to do. Maybe…” It had to be said. “Maybe he’s already got another victim. Maybe he made her call you, got her to pretend to be Maria.”
Kyle stalked toward her, closing the small distance. “Why?”
“So you’d lose your focus. So you’d make this investigation just about her.” It hurt to tell him these things, but they had a case to work. Eleven cases. “So you wouldn’t be able to do your job.”
When emotions were involved, the job always suffered. And the obsession Kyle had? You can’t catch the killer when you’re like this.
Their boss and Dani were both flying down to Paradox. Geologists and an excavation team were already trying to make their way into the caverns.
This killer hadn’t just splashed his way into the media. He’d exploded.
Paradox was about to come under a serious deluge of nonstop attention.
“I can do my job,” he gritted. “I’ve always done it.”
She knew he’d never stopped looking for Maria. That was who Kyle was. If their positions were reversed…
I’d do the same thing.
Which made it even harder for her to say, “I think he’s screwing with you.” Blunt words.